Higher order sliding mode based impedance control for dual-user bilateral teleoperation under unknown constant time delay

This paper presents a dual-user teleoperation scheme to perform a collaborative task using n-DOF nonlinear manipulators as masters and slave. Impedance controllers for the manipulators are implemented in order to achieve a desired dynamic behavior depending on the user´s necessities. Furthermore, a sliding mode controller is introduced to cope with the time delay in the communication channels and the uncertainty in the slave. Since the slave teleoperator is in contact with a rigid environment, the slave controller requires a free of chattering control strategy, which makes first order sliding mode teleoperation control unsuitable. Then a higher order sliding mode based impedance controller is proposed to guarantee robust impedance tracking under constant, but unknown time delay. Therefore, a position scaling factor is incorporated to deal with the different workspaces among masters and slave. The validity of the proposed control scheme is demonstrated via experimentation on a 3-DOF dual-user teleoperation system. While the haptic devices Phantom Premium 1.0A and a Phantom Omni are used as masters, a virtual industrial manipulator Catalyst-5 is used as slave. The dual-user system is tested not only in presence of constant unknown time delay in each of the communication channels but also in free and constrained motion regime.